Water Bear Confabulum 2017 Featured Artists
Maggie Libby
Maggie Libby creates large interactive drawings that invite people to alter familiar environments. On the alley walls of Java Joe’s the artist mounted two charcoal drawings (one 12’, one 16’) depicting local stretches of the Sandy River. Using pieces of bread, visitors are asked to draw into, write on, and erase the landscape images, creating a community collaboration. Maggie Libby studies the geography, flora, and fauna of Maine to map its changes and our parallel social changes. She is a visual resources curator at Colby College.
Beth Wittenberg
Beth Wittenberg responds to contemporary and historical political events in public installations laced with intensely personal iconography. Through the fall semester 2017 she collaborated with the Art and Environment class to create an installation addressing homelessness and food insecurity—two issues the students identified as important but often hidden concerns for students at UMF. In the green space off
High Street between Sugarwood Gallery and OriginUSA Wittenberg and the students create an empty village from found materials, scraps of poetry, and intermittent performances. The village is inhabited only by Wittenberg’s haunting Throw-Away People.
